Ignite National Technology Fund, with support from Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, is enabling five promising Pakistani startups to showcase their solutions at GISEC Global 2026 in Dubai, one of the world’s leading cybersecurity gatherings. The 15th edition of GISEC has expanded 20 percent year-on-year and moved to Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City Dubai, bringing together more than 25,000 cybersecurity professionals, 750 exhibiting brands, and participants from over 180 countries, giving Pakistan’s delegation exposure to a substantially larger and more internationally distributed audience than most domestic industry events can offer.
The five startups, EasyPII, D-SecureAI, ThreatFence, myESI, and Guardian Gaze, span digital privacy, AI powered security, threat intelligence, and cyber defence, reflecting the breadth of Pakistan’s cybersecurity startup ecosystem rather than concentration around a single narrow specialization. This year’s delegation follows Pakistan’s 2025 GISEC appearance, where seven Ignite-backed startups, including Securitanium and Compliance Machine.ai, advanced to the pitch competition semi-finals and secured concrete commercial outcomes, with Securitanium signing a distributor deal spanning Bahrain, the UAE, Ireland, and New Zealand, setting a precedent for what genuine follow-through from GISEC participation can look like beyond exhibition visibility alone.
The event’s scale carries added weight this year given the backdrop described by GISEC organizers, where the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 found that 94 percent of organizations expect artificial intelligence to be the biggest driver of cybersecurity change over the coming year, while 87 percent identify AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk. For Pakistani startups building AI powered security and threat intelligence tools specifically, this timing places their offerings directly within the industry’s most urgent current concern rather than adjacent to it.
GISEC Global 2026 runs from September 16 to 18 at Dubai World Trade Centre, and Ignite has framed the delegation’s participation around taking Pakistani innovation beyond borders, creating global connections, and opening new opportunities for the country’s broader technology ecosystem. The initiative continues Ignite’s established pattern of using major international cybersecurity and technology events as a structured pathway for Pakistani startups to secure global exposure, investor interest, and commercial partnerships, extending a relationship between Ignite and GISEC that began with Ignite’s role as GISEC’s partner for the Digital Pakistan Cyber Security Hackathon.
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